Listen Very Carefully. I shall say this only once.

Time To Stand – A Brief Call To Arms

Those who champion the cause of private, insurance-based healthcare, as opposed to free at the point of need NHS, should look at the example of insurers where a non-profitable risk exists.

I speak of flood insurance for people on a flood plain – it is becoming exorbitantly expensive, and may disappear altogether. For a while it looked like governments would continue to require insurance companies to provide such cover, but this was deemed anti-competitive. It violated the free market.

Directly similar, those who are in poor health will not be able to afford, or even get, health insurance, and will therefore suffer appallingly. To legislate for compulsory provision by insurance companies will also be a violation of ‘free market principles’.

Is that what we want in this affluent, cash-rich society of ours? The old and the sick denied proper care, denied basic human decency, freedom from pain?

Such things should not be part of a civilised society.

Such things should be thrown into the bin of history, at which memory we should all shudder.

Profit will not deliver universal care.

The two are totally incompatible, and diametrically opposed to each other. Money can only serve money; it cannot have two masters. It may well be a good misquote: you cannot serve man and mammon.

Fight for your country’s honour and decency, not by killing families in Iraq, Aghanistan, but rather by refusing – loudly and forcefully – to support those who wish to plunge this country into shame and dishonour.

If you do not fight, this will be our legacy to the children – fear of illness.